The Kovaci barber

Listen to testimony

Only the decoration of the shop has changed and not even that much. In Aziz’s shop, the barber of Kovaci on Sarajevo hill, customers are still queuing.
Old Aziz has acquired more wrinkles while Adli, his grandson, now fourteen, has moved back to Dobrinja with his parents. He spent his infant years with his grandfather at the shop, far from his house then located on the front-line. Today he thinks about his future and after finishing high school he dreams of a strange job for a young boy…
“My name is Adli and in a few days I will be fourteen.I remember the long days spent here with my grandfather, the barber of Kovaci. But he tells me often the stories of that time. 
Our family house is located in Dobrinja, near the airport so my parents chose, during the siege of the city, to leave me here in the city centre, with my grandfather, this place was much more secure. 
So I spent nearly 4 years in the middle of scissors and clippers. 
Today, I returned to live with my family in Dobrinja. I came here just to meet you. I wanted to see this old picture! The passion for barbers’ work has influenced me. I think after high school I will go into a professional school and open a hairdressing salon… a fashionable one…or, more likely take over grandfather’s shop, I love this place. 
My future is here in Bosnia, in Sarajevo. I want to marry and have many children and become a barber… like my grandfather.”